So imagine waking up to discover on breakfast television that Jay Naidoo is off on a rally across the African continent with none other than Bobby Brown. Shucks, does this mean that doe-eyed Whitney Houston will be popping up to croon loving words of encouragement to her man at every pit stop between Tunis and our Fairest Cape? This would indeed be affirmation for the Dark Continent.
Only it turns out to be nothing of the sort. It’s the wrong Bobby Brown, to begin with. It’s not Whitney’s roustabout husband with the razor-sharp parting on his hip- hopping head. It’s our very own, local Bobby Brown, the one with the undecided mess of would-be dreadlocks on his skull.
And the rally, by Jay’s own admission, is not the kind of rally we’d been led to think it was. “This rally,” he says, “is not about driving.”
“What?” No, “It is a rally to political leadership, investors and civil society to create awareness of telecommunications and the need for it to drive Africa’s economic renaissance.”
Oh. Well, this is interesting new use of the Queen’s lingo, to begin with. But then again, the Queen doesn’t live in Africa, and this is African business we’re dealing in. “Rally” now means the same as “call”, only why not simply say “a call to political leadership” etcetera, etcetera? Well, because it’s a rally.
The dictionary says a “rally” is “a competition to test skill in driving and ability to follow an unknown route, or to test the quality of motor vehicles”. It can also be used to mean to “bring together for a united effort”, which is what I assume is meant in this case.
And yet, in spite of the minister’s protestations, the safari has been adorned with all the trappings of a genuine road rally. There are the expensive, state-of- the-art Japanese 4x4s, the back-up teams, the helicopter and Hercules advance parties, the glitz and the glamour. The minister makes sure to tell us at every point of the journey how gruelling the actual driving is, briefly stepping out of his normal Satyagraha-like humility to gently boast about his prowess behind the wheel.
If it was really a double-edged play on the idea of a sporting rally and a rally with political intentions, you’d have thought that Jay and Bobby would at least have raised the sporting stakes and had, say, Jay’s ministerial counterpart in each benighted country en route join in. There could have been a duel, however stagey, to see which minister could best match Jay’s road-rallying skills – first one to the border gets a little renaissance medal or something.
This would still have put Jay, with his country’s superior technology, at an unfair advantage. But it would at least have made the whole thing look more sporting – like when you unleash a rabbit and give it a 10- second start before you let the hounds and the horses go tally-hoing after it.
It might also have made it look a little more interesting from the publicity point of view: we’d have been able to learn a little more about those far-flung countries of the north through the personalities of some of their ministers, even if they were only half as funky as our Jay.
As it is, each local minister is relegated to the role of genuflecting host as Jay- and-Bobby-Sahib come collectively prancing into the oasis. The only competition allowed is easygoing DJ Bob Mabena. He’s driving another of the 4x4s, but why he’s there no one can explain. He’s certainly not allowed to beat the minister.
>From the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, Bobby, with his old-fashioned lollypop microphone, tried to coax Jay into describing his journey across the trackless desert in spiritual terms. Jay obliged, describing the experience as one in which “mind and body fused together” causing him to reach a state of bliss.
Jay’s eyes have an unnaturally superhuman shine these days. He slaps his steering wheel with yogi-like glee. He says he has never been happier in his life. He has discovered the mesmerising continent of Africa and its hospitable people. He even describes a local delicacy prepared by the people of northern Sudan as tasting like the kind of food his mother used to make when he was a little child.
“I feel like a new-born baby,” he says. And so he should. After all, this is the Cradle of Mankind.
But what is it all for? The missionary talk about creating telecommunications awareness bit the dust on day one, when wide-eyed Bobby reported the amazing discovery of telephones in every village in Tunisia. A quick phone call from Cape Town could have provided them with the same information with much less strain -through the magic of telecommunications, nogal.
So why are they out there? The answer can only be that they are running – away from what is nobody’s business but their own. But the fact that, back home, the minister’s desk is piled high with the ongoing intrigues of SABC power struggles, Telkom’s relentless ineffectiveness, and an overstaffed and under-performing postal service maybe gives us a tiny little clue.